where we start from
by A. Meril
Summary: The war ends for everyone. 31 October 1981 to 1 November 1981. Marauder's era ensemble cast, plus OCs.


**Disclaimer:** Naturally, JKR owns everything, and I'm making no money. I do own original characters in here, though. All the bolded lines heading every section are from T.S. Eliot poetry: something else that I do not own.

**Notes:** Thanks to Noldo, who read this first, and shiiki, who helped smooth out the wrinkles.

Enjoy!

---

**where we start from**

**a story ended**

_Godric's Hollow_

_31 October_

_11:03 PM_

"What was that?"

"I'm sure it's just the wind, Lil."

**still point**

_Godric's Hollow_

_31 October_

_11:19 PM_

There is a suffocating feeling to the air, as though it were all rushing somewhere else before roaring back and flattening everything. _A storm,_ Eliot Morrish thinks uneasily, shivering before his stove. _Just a storm._

And then the world explodes.

**ash on an old man's sleeve**

_London_

_31 October_

_11:29 PM_

_And so it is, _Albus Dumbledore thinks, hearing Severus Snape's raggedly delivered message, _that the old live to see the young perish._

**the hollow men**

_Godric's Hollow_

_31 October_

_11:31 PM_

And then comes a sudden rumble in the air: Hagrid whips around, pink umbrella held at the ready: but--

--it's Sirius Black, ripping towards him on that motorbike, ghastly white and wild with terror. "Hagrid, I just checked, I just..." He sees James' body atop the rubble and chokes. "James, James, oh God, oh Merlin, what have I done?"

"They're gone," Hagrid croaks. "An' Harry..." He brings forward the crying toddler, who now has a strangely-shaped, still-bleeding cut on his forehead.

Sirius touches Harry's cheek with a shaking hand. "What have I done?" he whispers again.

**undisciplined squads of emotion**

_Godric's Hollow_

_31 October_

_11:44 PM_

Half the house is caved in from a point vaguely in the middle; crumpled, as if a giant suddenly decided that it annoyed him. The left side has an exposed staircase that leads towards the sky and then drops to the ground. In the front room, there is a gaping hole into the basement. The only wall standing is the western one.

Una Cleary presses a hand to her mouth, thinks, _Impossible_.

No one should have survived such destruction, even if he _did_ manage to block the Killing Curse.

"Madam Cleary?"

The new recruits look so young, and so unprepared. Trace Brewster is quietly being sick into the bushes, and Elsa Page is a few shades whiter than normal. _They knew James and Lily, _Una recalls._ They were in the same year._

"Put 'em to work, Una," Moody growls, limping past her towards the wrecked Potter home.

Una swallows heavily, and assumes her strictest face.

**this love is silent**

_Kent_

_1 November_

_12:25 AM_

_Your son is safe now._

_A.D._

Alice sobs, more in anguish than relief, and falls into Frank's arms. Little Neville snores lightly on the bed behind them.

**at least we exist**

_Godric's Hollow_

_1 November_

_12:36 AM_

"Thrice-damned fools," Bellatrix snarls from the trees, watching the Aurors creeping around to throw wards and glamours over Godric's Hollow. "Glorifying a Mudblood's whelp. We shall see how you fare when Lord Voldemort returns." Pulling the hood over her head, she turns into the shadows and vanishes.

**to care and not to care**

_Godric's Hollow_

_1 November_

_1:21 AM_

"And you're...? Yes, of course, you called about... I'm Merritt Appleton," the Muggle says in a distracted rush. "Where did you say you were from?"

"Er." Evie Sangster shifts awkwardly, fingering her wand in her pocket. "I'm a policewoman, see. The captain figured you'd need help."

Merritt Appleton blinks. "Yes, of course. We don't even have police in Godric's Hollow, there's never any trouble, and there was no one to take charge when-- when the terrible thing happened. Nearest police are in the" --he waves a hand vaguely, looking lost-- "the city, miles away... I just decided to tell most everyone to back away, and some of us to try and find survivors... That was such an old house, and those nice young people..."

Evie feels a wave of pity for him: he's trying to make sense of it all, and none of the ends are tying themselves up. To her horror, she feels her throat clenching and a prickling feeling at her eyes.

"Well." Evie swallows and tries not to cry. "If you'll sign this, and release their-- their bodies to me, I can start to help you sort this out."

**how far one can go**

_Birmingham_

_1 November_

_3:34 AM_

Padfoot has never been singleminded except when Moony was loose there are usually too many things to smell and taste and see and fetch and the world is too interesting to worry very much about anything

but now is _different_, now Wormtail has betrayed JamesandLilyandHarry now all the scents are blended together in the greatsmellycity but all Padfoot smells is that rat-scent he knows as well as his own that now shrieks _Wormtail! Betrayal! _with every sniff and there is no room left in his dog-mind for the cabs and lorries honking at him the street cats hissing at him, and he thinks _Peter Peter why why did you do this __why_when his paws get tired but no room for questioning no there is only the smell and the chase and the thought of revenge.

**at the end of an action**

_Edinburgh_

_1 November_

_4:47 AM_

"Dad?"

"Jamie?" Jack MacGrorie says groggily. "What...? What time..." He catches sight of his son's face in a strip of moonlight, and sees that Jamie (his son, the Auror) is shaking.

"Dad... He's gone."

**to say the courageous thing**

_Diagon Alley_

_1 November_

_5:02 AM_

"Here," Kevin Wootton coughs, slapping the tightly furled special edition of the _Prophet_ onto the very old Duplicating Deck.

Aeneas Moon takes it wordlessly, and hurries to set the pages in the correct places. He refills the potion tanks, flipping switches here and there, muttering spells all the while to get the machine started, and finally placing his wand-tip on the original to start the whole process. The headline starts to cycle past: _YOU-KNOW-WHO DEFEATED! HARRY POTTER LIVES!_

It's more difficult underground, but Kevin imagines it's easier than working in their decimated headquarters back in the remains of Diagon Alley. "We ain't goin' down that easy, gents," Will Crawford grunted, when the Alley was overtaken a year ago. "Get the _Prophet_ out, or die trying." Craw's dad died fighting Grindelwald, they all knew, over in Germany; he took the war with Voldemort very, very personally.

So they kept working. After the body of Aeneas' wife was dumped in London, after Valentine's flat was burned, after Craw was finally captured three months ago, after, after, after...

"Val wrote it up good," Kevin says, absently straightening the paper crammed between the Deck and the wall. "She wants to start writing tribute pieces soon."

"Good," Aeneas grunts. "The heroes deserve it."

"No, about the ones who died," Kevin says quietly. "She wants to write one on Oriel first."

They fall silent, listening to the Deck creak through copies of the paper, and when Aeneas' fingers clench tighter, Kevin is there to say, "I know, mate. I know."

**war is not a life**

_Ottery St. Catchpole_

_1 November_

_5:10 AM_

"The War is over," Stella Lovegood announces solemnly, coming into the house with baby Luna tucked carefully in a Native American-style papoose.

Molly Weasley watches in amazement as Stella sits at the kitchen table and begins removing the papoose bindings with her wand. Who does this woman think she is, wandering about at ungodly hours with a war going on, and carrying her _baby_ with her?! Madness! Molly's Imperius question ("What do your daughter and mine have in common?" "Absolutely nothing."), hissed distrustfully through the door, hadn't seemed to faze Stella in the slightest. "If you don't _mind_," Molly says cuttingly, "my family needs to go back to sleep. We get little enough of that these days."

They rarely sleep, in fact. Arthur is always in and out, at the Ministry or cleaning some place up after a Death Eater attack; he gets enough time at home for a bit to eat and an hour's worth of anxious sleep. Molly worries about the heavy circles that are becoming permanently etched beneath his eyes. He tries to keep her spirits up, to comfort her, but she knows he doesn't have enough hope to sustain the both of them. So Molly sits at home with icy hands, trying to keep her heart from racing with fear, to keep a brave face for her children, and trying very hard not to imagine that what happened to her brothers could easily happen to any of them.

Stella gazes at her with compassion. "I know you don't believe me," she says gently, "but it's true. I saw Lord Voldemort fall when I looked in the mirror at midnight. I thought someone should know."

"Forgive me," Molly snaps, flinching at the free use of The Name, "but things are just as _bad_ as they have always been."

"Your brothers miss you," Stella adds quietly. "They wanted you to know that."

Caught off guard, Molly stares directly back at Stella, and in those calm, pale blue eyes, she sees truth.

"Molly! MOLLY, CHILDREN!"

Arthur bursts out of the fireplace, covered in sparkling Floo ash. "Molly, Molly, the most wonderful news!" he exclaims, wild-eyed with excitement. He dashes over to the windows and begins to tear off the warded boards.

"ARTHUR!" Within seconds the children come tumbling into the kitchen, Charlie clutching baby Ginny, Bill holding the twins back by the necks of their sleepers, protesting, "Mum, they wouldn't stay, I tried to keep them upstairs--!"

"It's all right," Arthur interrupts, face shining as the night air flows into the house. Wand in one hand and board in the other, he says the short sentence that will change how they live: "You-Know-Who is gone."

"Look, shooting stars," Stella whispers to her daughter, pointing out the window as Molly cries and Arthur holds her. "All the departed souls are celebrating with us."

**know the place for the first time**

_London_

_1 November_

_6:51 AM_

The set of flats in which the Tonkses have their home has become a gathering place in the last few years, with witches and wizards living in Muggle London congregating there for news, for protection, for company. Andromeda lets a sleepy Dora lean against her hip, standing apart and listening as her neighbors excitedly trade rumors.

"My cousin, Trace, he's a junior Auror," a young witch with glasses (Pandora Shannon, Andromeda recalls) says excitedly. "He was at the Potters' house not long after it happened, and You-Know-Who's _gone_, really and truly _gone_!"

"Does anyone know 'ow he died?" a gruff old wizard mutters. "I don't know if I should believe it, not for a second..."

"Does it _matter_ how he died, you old fool?!" the landlady laughs, grabbing him into a slightly frenzied jig. "You-Know-Who is gone!"

"My friend Evie, she's in Magical Catastrophes, she tells me that the whole house was destroyed--"

"--and he still lived, Harry Potter survived. Miraculous..."

The Muggles are starting to come outside, looking a mixture of sleepy, annoyed, and confused. One tiny woman claps her hands over her mouth when she sees the big yellow firecrackers shot off by Flick Ayers, who is sobbing with joy and grief.

_This is it, _Andromeda realizes with a bubble of hope. _We've won our peace._ She looks at Ted with shining eyes, seeing peace for Dora to grow up in, no more cloak-and-dagger work at St. Mungo's, and the quiet disappearance of that threat that shadowed every moment.

"For Lily and James Potter," she shouts, lighting the sky with a brilliant streak of white light, "and the Boy Who Lived!"

**Footfalls echo in the memory,**

**Down the passage which we did not take,**

**Towards the door we never opened**

**Into the rose-garden.**

_James Potter_

_27 March 1960 - 31 October 1981_

_Lily Potter_

_30 January 1960 - 31 October 1981_


End file.
